Principal Krull discusses UTM’s future

Principal Krull gave a review of the UTM campus at Thursday’s Governing Council Meeting.

On
Thursday, February 28, the University of Toronto held their Governing Council
meeting at UTM after a brief tour around the campus, where chancellors and
guests were able to see the results of the campus remodeling.

Clair Kennedy, elected
chair of Governing Council, first began the meeting with condolences for the
late Chancellor Michael Wilson and spoke of his great contributions to mental
health. An introduction to the 2019-2020 returning council then followed for
both elected and re-elected governors, who will have a seat at the Governing
Council table for a 3-year term.

Ulrich Krull, UTM’s Vice
President and Principal, then gave a review of the UTM campus. Krull commented
on the increasing influx of students, which is nearly at 16,000 students, and
the “intention to level off” in the upcoming years.

Principal Krull also
commented on UTM’s move into the research sphere, and the university’s reaction
to the 10 per cent tuition cut.

“The intention overall
is to really invest in terms of what we do as full-fledged members of the
University of Toronto”, Principal Krull said. “This campus has been built on an
undergraduate backbone and we will now move toward investment and research. We
want to build out that research structurally.”

“While we do this, we
also recognize: three campuses, one university. Whatever we are developing here
on this campus will be tied to the other campuses […] This is something that we
try to nurture: the idea that the value is not just for this campus but for the
university.”

Regarding the 10 per
cent tuition cut implemented by the provincial government on January 17,
Principal Krull discusses proposals that UTM is considering following the
government changes.

“This is a clash that’s
going to come up both in this body as well as the entire university as we try
to accommodate the financial implications of the tuition cut […] one of the
ways of dealing with these financial cuts is simply an across the board cut.
That would be the easy way of doing things, whatever percentage it requires.
That does not nurture excellence. It does not change the pattern in which
excellence could be found.”

Instead Principal Krull
hopes to take a community approach when evaluating how the university wants to
move forward.

“We have reached out on the academic side to
the chairs and directors of the departments and we have informed them of a
whole variety of things that could be taken both as cuts and terms of income.”

Since
the university is limited with domestic student tuition, but can have more
economic flexibility with international student tuition, many have wondered if
U of T will increase tuition for international students to offset the 10 per
cent tuition cut.

On the
question of whether the university will take in more international students to
offset the budget cuts, Principal Krull answered, “No. We will use it as one
piece of a mix of actions that will allow us to find a path forward from a
standpoint of equilibrium. But the equilibrium is designed so we do not
sacrifice our long-term academic plan.”

Principal
Krull stated that UTM will continue to hire faculty and staff, if budget
permitting, but noted that “one of the ways of dealing with the academic constraints
is to simply slow the hiring process […] and to slow some of the other
investments we have in capital investments.”

“On the
revenue side, where we have international students, we must recognize that our
long-term plan on this campus, as we move towards our vision of an
internationally significant research-intensive university, is to have about one
in four of our students be international students.”

“We are
running at about 24 per cent international students right now,” Principal Krull
continued, “so the discussion here, as one talks about taking in more
international students, is to go from 24 to 25.”

U of T
President Meric Gertler also remarked on the recent provincial changes. “We had
our first round of technical briefings with the staff from the Ministry of
Training Colleges and Universities. So, some of these details are coming into
clearer focus, but I would hasten to add that many are still not that clear.”

“The
new framework has to be in place for the 2019-2020 school year and tuition
levels will be frozen for the 2020-2021 year as well. What happens after that?
We’re not really sure.”

“The
government’s decision will have the effect of cutting our operating revenue by
$65 million year over year in 2019-2020 relative to last year’s budget.
Relative to our budget plan for 2019-2020 it’s a cut of $88 million.”

U of T
Principal Gertler also mentioned December 31 marked the end of the Boundless
Campaign. On March 19, the “final big number” will be announced at the
Presidents’ Circle club event.

“It will
be cause for much celebration because we’ve received gifts from over one
hundred thousand unique donors. You can’t thank them all in one event, you have
to have a series of events […] [and so] we have settled on this idea of having
a season of gratitude.”